Redo events and they won't be the same
by hopper18
Summary: Zuko was thrown into the past by accident. Would he be able to return?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar the last Airbender**

* * *

It was a nice and ordinary day, the kind of day where you thought nothing other than the daily events would happen. Unfortunately, life didn't always go the way one would expect and it could change drastically in just mere seconds. That was exactly what happened to Zuko on that particular, supposed-to-be-normal day. Up until that point, his life was already full of twists, most of which were painful ones, but he had believed that after all he had been through, he deserved a break. Clearly, he was so very, very wrong.

It started at one of his rare free times spent at his uncle's teashop. Being the Firelord, he hardly ever managed to get away from his duty, especially with all the post-war arrangements he had to see to. Making up for a hundred year of raging war was no easy job-Zuko had never expected it to be-and the task kept him working to the ground most of the time. Meetings, mountains of paperwork and numerous other stuffs always kept him occupied. He didn't have any issue with the amount of work he had to deal with and he was coping with everything he had. But just for today, he made an allowance and excused himself from the leader role. Everything had started to fall into place and he was beginning to have less trouble keeping track of them, that's why he thought he could at least have some time to himself. However, the actual reason he so desired to visit Jasmine Dragon on this specific day was because it was the place and date the whole Avatar Team-which meant Aang, Katara, Sokka, Suki, Toph and of course, Zuko- agreed to rendezvous. He already missed out on many of those gatherings as it was, he didn't want to be left out again on this one. Besides, it was only among these people that he can really be himself, just plain Zuko and not the Firelord. So he decided to leave his work for tomorrow, despite knowing full well that there would be hell to pay later. For now, he would just enjoy himself.

Zuko was the first person to reach the teashop. He was making tea with his uncle when Sokka arrived with Suki, the former holding the latter around the waist. The Watertribe young man greeted him with one of his trademark jokes, which for the life of him Zuko could never understand-he didn't know if the problem was his sense of humor or Sokka's-but he smiled nevertheless. Toph was next. She was still the same as ever, wearing that cheeky grin of her and addressed him-the Firelord-Sparky. Zuko had come to regard her as a little sister in the normal sense in contrast to his real and sadistic one. In late morning, when the final members, Aang and Katara arrived, there was an unfortunate incident that involved Zuko, though it wasn't really his fault to be fair. He had been talking to Toph with his back to the front door when Katara came in and suddenly decided to sneak up on him. Toph, ever the prankster, didn't alarm him of the waterbender's presence. Zuko, despite being the seasoned warrior that he was, didn't sense her at all. That was why, when he felt a sharp tap on his back, he overreacted a bit and somehow had burned of one of Katara's hair loopies. She was scandalized. Amazing a healer though Katara was, her healing power didn't apply to hair. Even though he had apologized profusely and he wasn't responsible in the first place, Katara kept sending him chilling glares and crossed her arms whenever she laid her eyes on him. Eyeing her brother and her boyfriend, Zuko silently pleaded for advices but all he got in return were shrugs. Well, so much for helping each other when in need. Zuko sighed. He'd better try giving her some gifts later to appease her anger or risk watching out for anything with water for the rest of his life.

In spite of that little accident, it was overall an enjoyable visit. Everyone he knew and trusted were all here, in this cozy place, and for once, Zuko let his guard down. And it was exactly at that rare moment that something big happened.

Since his coronation, Zuko had been met with several assassination attempts, though he never mentioned them to anyone and dealt with them himself. No matter how hard he tried, there would always be someone who was dissatisfied with his way of ruling. The differences was that he was always ready for the previous ones, whereas he was nowhere near prepared for the knife that narrowly missed his head the moment he stepped outside the tea shop. Everything would have still been okay, though, had Katara not decided to went out after him at that very moment and the knife met another mark, which was her shoulder.

Hearing Katara's cry of surprise and pain, Aang rushed to the scene. The knife hadn't hit anything vital, that Zuko was sure of, but seeing Katara kneeling on the ground, clutching her shoulder from which blood began to soak through her sleeve was a devastating sight. Usually, the airbender had a pretty firm grip on the Avatar state, but one look at Katara and he was immediately sent over the edge. Looking back on this moment, Zuko figured he should have known better and stepped out of Aang's attacking range. At the moment, though, he stood rooted to the spot as Aang's tattoo glowed and the assassin dropped with a thud on the ground then, regaining his composure, sped towards Aang when the Avatar showed no sign of stopping. He should have just left it to Katara-her and her alone was able to deal with Aang when he went out of control. The last thing he registered before his world going black was someone calling his name as he was blasted by all four of the elements.

* * *

Pain. His body hurt all over. He groggily opened his eyes. It took a few moment for him to recall what happened. He was still alive? Sitting up and rubbing his sore head, Zuko looked around and was startled by his surroundings. He wasn't in the Earth kingdom anymore. Before he could even started to make a guess as to where he was, he heard Appa's growl somewhere nearby. Running towards the noise, he soon saw the huge body of the bison coming into sight and along with it were the figures of Aang, Sokka and Katara. They quickly turned as he came near and the look on their faces could only be described as pure shock. Zuko gave Katara a worried glance, but he couldn't spot any sign of her injury. Frowning at this, he took a few steps closer, but before he could open his mouth to ask what happened, a water blast hit him in the face and his world went black for the second time, and it hadn't even been five minutes since he woke up from the first.

* * *

**Sorry if this isn't good. You can blame the plot bunny that made me write this :)**

**And please forgive me if my grammar isn't very accurate. I'm not English.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thanks everyone who read this.**

* * *

"….he followed…from the North Pole…."

"…..do with him?"

Voices penetrated through his hazy consciousness in the form of disjointed words and his mind-which was hovering on the edge of waking, yet not fully aware-could make neither head nor tail of them.

"…..leave him…"

"No….rouse him….question…."

Who was speaking? What was the person saying? He was still so disoriented and out-of-it, he couldn't even yield any coherent thought, let alone understand the argument of some strangers. Strangers? No. Somehow, the voices were familiar. He definitely knew them from somewhere. What were their names? He had them on the tip of his tongue. If he was just given a few moments…a few moments…

SPLASH

"Gah!" Zuko spluttered. Someone just dumped water over him! The cold liquid drenched him from head to toes and hauled him forcefully to complete awareness. Shaking his head, Zuko brought his hands up to wipe the water out of his face. Or rather, he tried. For some reason, his arms were stuck to his side and no matter how hard he willed them to move, they wouldn't budge. Plus, he noted, he was also terribly cold, a fact that he had just begun to notice. Opening his eyes and looking down, he quickly found the reason to all his current discomforts.

He was standing with his back against a large tree, confined to the position by a block of ice which encased from his neck and all the way down to his hip, underneath which a thick rope was visible. His gaze slowly traveled away from his body to the front of him. Someone was standing there. He didn't need to find the person's face to know who it was. There was just no mistaking that Watertribe clothes and that figure.

"Katara," Zuko groaned "I know you are mad about your hair, but isn't this a bit extreme?"

"Excuse me?"

There was something in the tone with which she spoke, something that spelled confusion amidst extreme wariness so clearly that made Zuko looked up. His eyes found her, and he was startled at the genuine fear he saw there. She was afraid of him. He searched his mind over, but he was unable to recall anything he did recently that could cause Katara to act this way, and it really unnerved him. He turned to his left and found Sokka and Aang. The thought that this was some sort of elaborate joke began to ebb away by the moment as he watched his two friends shifted into fighting stances and Sokka had his boomerang out, their faces deadly serious, looking like they were expecting him to try and take their heads off. He hadn't seen that kind of look being directed at him, especially from them, for a long time. Not since….

"What were you attempting to to?" Katara spat at him and it shocked Zuko to hear the venom in her words.

Before Zuko could open his mouth to ask what exactly was she talking about, her brother cut in.

"Freaky ponytail guy's clearly here to capture Aang again. But you know….." Sokka stroke his chin thoughtfully "…he looked different somehow."

"Eh…Maybe because he cut his hair?" Aang suggested helpfully.

"That's it!" Sokka yelled excitedly. He clapped his hands together and pointed at Zuko "I've got it. From now on you'll be freaky scar guy."

Zuko closed his mouth with a snap after realizing that his jaw had dropped open at the mention of the two ridiculous nicknames. Quickly recovering from the shock, his brain went back to process the whole of Sokka's sentence. There was something important information that he'd failed to digest the first time. Then it hit him with the force of a fire blast to the chest.

_Capture Aang._

Shaking uncontrollably at what those two words could potentially imply, he turned back sharply to Katara, who tensed noticeably, and for the first time since he woke up here, truly looked at her. There was no sign of injury on her, no bandage, nothing. Moreover, her hair loopies, about which Zuko had listened to her grumbling on and on all morning, were there, totally undamaged. Something else registered in his mind. Sokka had his boomerang. Didn't he lose it when stopping the warship fleet? And Aang was holding his old air glider. Zuko's breathing was coming in short gasps now. No, it couldn't be.

"What date is it today?" he grounded out, his voice trembling for fear that he would be right.

Katara frowned at his question. She pulled out the water from her waterskin and held it protective in front of her.

"If you are trying to trick us, I warn you, one move and you're death."

"Just ANSWER the QUESTION!" Zuko snapped, his tone heavily laced with desperation and dread. Still eyeing him warily, Katara seemed to struggle to find some kind of harm he could do to them should she comply to his wish and, finding none, she told him. And with just a few words, she confirmed his worst fear.

No. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be right. He shook his head. There was just no way his theory could possibly be right. If it was, how on earth would he be able to fix this situation? However, there was one thing he realized he must absolutely do immediately in the slim chance that he was correct.

He had to get away from here.

Summoning his firebending, he had his binding and the ice destroyed in a split second. Katara was startled by his sudden movement, she jumped back and flung the water she was holding towards him. Zuko dodged the attack easily. Her movement was much slower than her usual standard, he noted dully. Aang and Sokka had also jumped into action. But even with all three of them ganging up on him, Zuko still had the upper hand, and that was without him using fire or even fighting back. Aang was assaulting him with only airbending. No earth, fire or water. Even with his main element, the avatar was so much weaker than Zuko could remember. There was no way this was the person that defeated Ozai. His attacks weren't even close to touching Zuko. Backing away slowly towards the wood, Zuko waited for the right moment.

There!

He sent out a blast of fire that collided with the ground, careful not to hit any of his attackers, only sending them stumbling backward, the flame hiding Zuko from view. Then, with all the agility his body possessed, Zuko ran off, putting as much space as possible between himself and his three friends who were after him like he was their enemy.

* * *

**Okay, I need some help with this story. It's the same with my other stories, but my chapters are painfully short. Anybody minds giving me some idea?**


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks everyone who read and reviewed**

* * *

"I can't believe he's got the nerve to just waltz in on us like that!" Katara growled angrily as she strutted around to gather their belongings. Their camping location had proved to be safe no longer from the moment Zuko showed up. The grassy clearing which they had decided to let Appa take a rest in now spotted a large circular black burn mark that stood out vividly against the green background, and thin trails of smoke were still rising from the charred wood of the tree to which the Prince of the Fire Nation was bound to-the result of Zuko's retaliation-as proof of the sudden encounter. He had disappeared as abruptly as he came and-to be honest-hadn't done any real damage. Still, the fact that he was probably lurking around somewhere in the wood, waiting to strike was enough for them to leave the area immediately. It was unnerving for all three of them to receive the unexpected house call from the firebender, but Katara's mood in particular was the foulest. Her two companions could practically see a sinister aura emanating from her and decided that it was wise to just left her to her own device. The waterbender was angry. She was currently shoving all her anger onto the head of their adversary-Zuko-who was of course absence from the scene at the moment and making use of her greatly improved vocabulary to curse him with everything she could think of. However, it only served to frustrate her more and more as deep down, she knew she was just being angry at herself. She had had Zuko pinned against a tree, bound and even frozen. Yet with just a blast of his fire, Zuko had completely thrown her off. After that, even with Aang and Sokka at her side, she was completely unable to touch the firebender. How come she was so weak? Had her training in the North Pole been futile then? Katara frowned as another thought occurred to her: Was Zuko always this powerful? The last time they faced, she had managed to fight him on par. Sure, he bested her in the end, but she had at least kept him at bay for a while, and that was one-on-one. The result of this match should have turned out differently. Yet, Zuko had won even when he was outnumbered three to one. Katara held no illusion that they had been victorious just because their enemy ran away. She knew that if it wasn't for some unfathomable reason for which Zuko hadn't tried to take Aang this time, they would have been totally powerless to stop him.

Standing near her and loading their stuffs into Appa's saddle, Aang's mind was following a different trail of thought. Why didn't Zuko attack them? Now that Aang had time to recall the event properly, he realized that not once had the fire prince tried to launch an attack on them. The last explosion was more of a defensive one and Aang noticed that Zuko was even careful not to hit any of them. This struck him as odd. Looking back at their past encounter, any time Zuko was near him, his presence was always announced by fire blasts coming their way before they could even see who was attacking. But this time, he had actually let Katara knock him out without even getting into a fighting stance, and that was just plain weird. Zuko of all people had never lowered his guard. It was almost as if he didn't expect an attack to come from them, but that just made no sense. Aang shook his head, which was starting to hurt from all the thinking. He decided to push that nagging feeling he had about Zuko's strange behaviors to the back of his mind. Right now, they had to get to the Earth Kingdom. The avatar didn't know, however, as he was sitting on Appa who was flying five minutes later, that if he had just steered the bison a little more to the west and looked down, he would find the subject of his newfound worry who was in an even greater turmoil than his own.

* * *

Zuko looked up and watched as Appa and the people he knew would be riding it disappear from sight. The Firelord-was he even Firelord here?-turned and started to bang his head on a tree, hoping to somehow wake up from this nightmare. The act, of course, did nothing other than giving Zuko a bruise that was beginning to form on his forehead. Finally forced to admit that he was not going anywhere from this reality, Zuko pressed his back against the tree trunk and slid down until he was sitting on the ground, his head between his knees. What was he supposed to do now if this wasn't just a horrible dream? The panic that he had somehow quenched down up until now was coming back with a vengeance and he found himself becoming more and more hysteric by the second. If Katara had been truthful-and he saw no reason that she should lie-then he had actually gone back to the past. His stunned brain was still trying to process the ridiculous notion. Was a thing such as time traveling even possible? No, scratch that part. If he really was back in the past, then he was in very, very deep trouble. The war was still going on, his father was still in power. Those thought made him shudder. Was this even the past as he knew it? Would thing still go the same way? If this was indeed the very same past he had lived through, then he had just made an enormous mistake by meeting up with Aang and the others. Would that change their next course? What would happen to his time if something from this period went a different way? Could his appearance possibly have changed the outcome of the war? He hope not. But either way, change or no change, he was in deep trouble. Even if he hadn't damaged this past beyond repair-which he seriously doubted, considering his luck-he still had no idea what he was supposed to do. Stay hidden until Aang defeated Ozai? What would happen to him after that?

The animals in the forest that noon were startled by a loud cry of frustration that escaped the throat of a confused firebender as his many question went unheeded and unanswered.

* * *

**Hope this was okay. Anyways, can anyone give me a list of the events that happened since The Siege of the North?**


	4. Chapter 4

It had been a while since Zuko last felt any real animosity towards Aang, but right now, as he traced Appa's flying route through the bison white fur, he found himself cursing the Avatar under his breath with the most offensive words he could possibly think of. In fact, he was contemplating how to throttle the boy without affecting this timeline or reality or whatever it was (which was impossible, of course). The confusion and dread he'd been drowning in in the few hours he spent here seemed to have drawn out his trademark short temper from those days chasing the Avatar, something he thought he had gotten rid of for good. Well-Zuko shrugged-having been attacked, blasted into another dimension, knocked out, tied up and now left alone with absolutely no help that he could seek, he thought he could at least have the privilege of getting angry. After he had gathered himself from his panic attack earlier and regained his rational thoughts to a certain degree, he had sought out Appa's trail-Azula was right, it was way too easy to spot-and had been able to deduce the destination of the group, which was most likely the Earth's kingdom. However, he still hadn't found the answer to the most vital question of all: What was he going to do?

At first, his initial plan had been following Aang. But then, it occurred to him that it would probably do him no good at all. He-as his uncle always said-was the type that act first, think later, but as he was completely stuck on the first part after some consideration of common sense, he decided to just move onto the latter. And that was how Zuko ended up sitting next to a merrily crackling fire that he started to warm himself against the bitter cold of the night in the forest, trying to backtrack the journey he had had (perhaps was having would be more exact) up until this point. He stared dejectedly at the ground as he dragged the stick that he held in his right hand across its surface, leaving some weird illustrations that were his version of whatever fragments of memory that he managed to recall. Although his recollection of the main events were clear, the little details had slipped away from him. For example, he knew that he found Aang at the South Pole and attacked him on Kyoshi Island, but what exactly happened in between the two occasions? Some images flashed brightly in his mind but others were blurred by a hazy fog. Even more troubling was the fact that he only had knowledge of his own adventure, not Aang's. The tip of the stick was now circling the scribbled sign of the Earth Kingdom in an uncertain sort of way. He didn't even know if they were really going there. Zuko then moved his makeshift pen over the drawing of his uncle's face together with his own and tapped at them. He thought back to the date that Katara told him today was. What had he been doing at that particular day? The siege of the North Pole had passed, no doubt. He had been traveling with his uncle afterwards and…oh… Zuko realized with a pang. This was around the time that he was declared a traitor to be hunted. Although he was not so much troubled about the accusation as he used to be back then, the sting was still there. He was unconsciously scrawling Azula's face along with her ship and realizing what he was doing, scratched out the figure. He decided that he would just have to make do with the vague estimation for now. Having sorted that out, his mind went back to the problem stated above: WHAT WAS HE GOING TO DO?

The first person that Zuko thought of going for help was his uncle. The man would know what should be done. He always did. Zuko felt a smile crept up on his face as he moved the stick to circle his uncle's drawn face only for it to be wiped off as his eyes rested upon his own face. Iroh was a no then. He would more likely than not run into his past self there (if he existed-Zuko still wasn't very sure about the concepts here yet) and then who knew what kind of fiasco would happened? Maybe he could follow Aang? Then what? Coming up to the group out of the blue, apology for trying to kill them and then acted like he was their friend all along? As if. Even if they did accept him-which was highly unlikely-who knew what kind of impact that act would have on the future? Zuko didn't always think things through, but he understood that much. Everything he did here might change the future as he knew it drastically, he couldn't risk the chance that this was somehow actually the past and it was connected to his time. He was already trying to quench the nagging feeling in the back of his mind that just by exposing himself, he had doomed their possibility of stopping the war. He shook his head to get rid of the horrible prospect. He was still here. If something had changed, he ought to notice, right?

Zuko threw the stick aside in frustration and brought his hand up to massage his forehead when he felt a headache forming. His few objectives were clear: find a way to get home and try not to change anything. Yet, the two goals contradicted each other. If he wanted to keep things the ways they were, he had to keep himself hidden, which meant no contact with Aang. However, Aang was the one who threw him here, so if he couln't go anywhere near the Avatar, how was he supposed to find out how to go back? On the other hand, if he revealed himself to Aang, he might very well lose the place to go back to. Neither option sounded very appealing. Still, he had never been one to stay still and wait for things to happen. Sozin Comet was still ages away from now. Zuko couldn't imagine just sitting by idly and do nothing until then. No-he reasoned-He had to go after Aang. Even if he couldn't truly be in contact with any of his friends (former friends? Or was that future ones?), he still had to keep in pace with what was going on. He would worry about other stuffs later.

Following Aang it was then. It wasn't the best plan, but it was the only one he'd got.

* * *

**I've never been able to write very long chapters. I hope this's okay.**


End file.
